Original articleBowel Frequency and Defecatory Patterns in Children: A Prospective Nationwide Survey
Section snippets
Patients and Methods
All children from birth to 12 years of age are enrolled in the National Health Service (NHS) in Italy. Care of children is assigned to each of the NHS pediatricians in groups of approximately 800, which are distributed evenly over the country to cover the needs of the entire Italian pediatric population.
Initially, an equal number of pediatricians belonging to centronorthern and southern Italy were selected randomly from the regional NHS list. Subsequently, regional coordinators of the study
Demographic and Socioeconomic Features
There were 2680 (94%) satisfactorily completed and returned questionnaires. There were 2065 (77%) obtained from routine follow-up visits and 615 (23%) obtained from children affected by acute intercurrent illness not affecting the gastrointestinal tract. Questionnaires referred to comparable numbers of female (49.8%) and male (50.2%) children distributed evenly for the 1-year age group and for the 2 main Italian geographic areas. Table 2, Table 3 summarize the demographic, socioeconomic, and
Discussion
This nationwide study was made possible because of the structure of the Italian NHS, in which all citizens aged 0–12 years are subdivided evenly and assigned to pediatricians who are distributed evenly throughout the country.
The proper selection of a representative nationwide sample of the entire pediatric population was possible by randomly selecting pediatricians from the NHS regional lists who geographically were distributed evenly. These selected pediatricians obtained the relevant data for
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the following pediatricians who made this study possible: Coordinators: M. R. Andreotti, G. Boschi, F. Cataldo, M. Fontana, S. Guandalini, G. Oderda, A. Ponticelli, M. Sanfilippo, L. Tarallo; NHS pediatricians: L. Alessandrini, A. Aloisio, L. Amato, M. R. Andreotti, S. Appendino, G. Ariatti, P. Azzoli, G. Bartoli, S. Bondavalli, A. Bozzanello, M. Caloiero, S. Capobianco, M. Caracalla, M. Caramello, L. Carbognani, A. Centineo, M. D. Chelucci, M. Comparetto, M.
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